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Mr Sawari is one of the first six refugees to take up the offer of resettlement in PNG, but it hasn't worked out as he had hoped, or PNG immigration officials had promised.

It was either take up the offer, he explained to Fairfax Media two months ago, or risk surrendering to the mind-numbing hopelessness of his situation at the transit centre set up for those on Manus Island who are found to be refugees.

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Now, having tasted the version of freedom that is on offer, he has decided that it is better to go back to Manus, where more 60 men reside in the transit centre and more than 900 remain in their third year of detention.

Orphan Jacob (pictured) met Mr Sawari on the streets of Lae and took him to a church. Photo: Supplied

There was some chance, when he left Lorengau, that Mr Sawari might be a kind of poster boy for resettlement. As one of the first to accept a job offer, he was motivated and willing to work and anxious to learn.

At first, things were going well. In regular contact with Fairfax Media, Mr Sawari's voice betrayed the excitement that his mind was being challenged after he had serviced his first two motor vehicles.

But he struggled to cope on a wage that was lower than the allowance of around $50 a week the refugees receive at the Lorengau transit centre, especially when he fell ill and the money charged by the local hospital was deducted from his pay.

Then there was a dispute with some of the other migrant workers who, he says, bullied him. The next time he made contact, Mr Sawari revealed he was thinking suicidal thoughts.

He walked away from job and the accommodation that came with it last Saturday week, spent his first night sleeping nearby and had his first brush with "rascals" the next day, seeing a man with a gun who did not see him.

After this experience, and being teased by locals, Mr Sawari's despair plumbed new depths before Jacob came to his aid and introduced him to Mr Butler, the self-described "bean counter" for the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Lae.

"I'd like to help to help him but I have no money," said Jacob, who was invited Mr Sawari to eat with himself and the other "street kids" in the last week.

On one day Mr Sawari says he counted 50 of them, all of them homeless "They don't have a father, no mother," he says.

Mr Butler offered to take Mr Sawari in for a few weeks and help him find his feet. "He seemed to have a good, caring attitude," he said of Mr Sawari. "He was concerned about the street boys that looked after him and they were concerned about him. They said: 'If he was out on the street, we're OK, but Loghman won't survive'."

Mr Butler describes PNG as a land of opportunity for those with skills, but adds: "For people that don't have education, qualifications or an entrepreneurial bent, life is going to be tough because there are eight million people competing for the (unskilled) jobs."

That is the lot of Mr Sawari and it will be the lot on many of the hundreds of other refugees if they are resettled in PNG.

"It's early days, but I'd like to see his English improve to the point where he could go to a trade school or a college and learn. I think he'd like that."

Herein lies the problem. Mr Sawari says he would like that, but has no capacity to sustain himself and fears being a burden on Mr Butler. That is why he wants to go back to Manus. It is why one of the resettled refugees who has qualifications and has found a good job has offered to pay his air fare. Whether he will be allowed to return is unclear.

Mr Sawari was 17 when he arrived at Manus. He has had two birthdays in detention and a third in the transit centre. Now the freedom that is on offer is so daunting, so compromised, that he has no will to grasp it.